Evolva enters discovery collaboration with Roche

Basel, Switzerland, 4th January 2010 - Evolva Holding SA (SIX: EVE) today announced that it has signed an agreement with Roche (SIX: ROG, RO; OTCQX: RHHBY) to create compounds with activity on targets in oncology and anti-infectives using Evolva’s technology platform.

Roche will pay Evolva an up-front technology access fee and ongoing research fees. Roche will have responsibility to take forward any compounds discovered during the collaboration and will potentially pay Evolva research and clinical milestone fees as well as royalties on any products that result from the collaboration. Evolva will have the first right to any compounds not taken forward, or subsequently deprioritised by Roche.

Neil Goldsmith, CEO & Managing Director of Evolva, said “The agreement with Roche represents another step forward in the development of our genetic chemistry technologies. By exploring biosynthetic scaffolds that have many of the “design features” of nature we aim to build a pipeline of novel diverse compounds with anti-infective and anti-cancer effects. We are very pleased to have a leading player such as Roche expressing their confidence in our discovery platform.”

About Evolva Holding SA

Evolva's proprietary discovery technology platform uses a "disruptive" technological approach to the creation of novel small compounds that differs sharply from the prevailing synthetic chemistry and protein engineering approaches in the pharmaceutical industry today. Based on this technology, Evolva has a number of discovery and pre-clinical partnerships which in 2008 generated revenues of about CHF 12 million. Evolva also has an attractive pipeline of compounds - one compound (for renal and cardiovascular diseases) entered Phase I at the beginning of 2009, and two others (an anti-fungal and an anti-viral) are expected to enter Phase I in 2010. Evolva is listed in the main standard of the SIX Swiss Exchange with the ticker EVE. For more information see www.evolva.com.

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